Commoditized Captives & Why “Elegance Without Warmth Is Arrogance” 

One of the most insightful business quotes is from Horst Schulze, former CEO of Ritz-Carlton, “Elegance without warmth is arrogance.”

Let’s unpack that for a minute.

During an interview with Knowledge@Wharton radio show, Schulze further explained that real excellence for the customer was individualization, rather than commoditization. And the reason why so many companies end up commoditizing, is their myopic focus on the bottom line. They became too big to navigate the nuances of their customers and made comprises on their product or service. As Schulze put it:

“Rather than make the soap a little smaller so you make more profit, eliminate your own mistakes. Work on your own processes and continue improvement and eliminate costs, consequently. Every time I eliminate a mistake permanently, I save money and improve my product at the same time.”

Let’s apply this line of thinking to the captive industry.

Perhaps this explains why some captive program managers rely on rate caps rather than proactive claims management? It should be no surprise then why rate caps are used most by the largest captive managers.

They have lost the ability (even willingness) to improve their product.

They will accept any employer and one size fits all because they’ve commoditized their captive structure.

You could even say there’s an arrogance to how they do business with their broker “partners.”

Here at Everlong, we believe in innovation and continuously improving our product over time. That’s why from the very beginning, with our first cell in 2010, we took the current captive model used in the business liability world, modified its structure, and improved its performance.

This approach continues more than a decade later and why we will never compromise our captive structure. Our commitment to excellence is another reason why there are no more than 50 members per cell within our high performance health insurance captives.

We don’t commoditize, we optimize.

Learn more about Everlong’s captive health insurance solutions.